Subtraction
by ok no
Summary: Wheatley ponders the rain, and is joined by a curious creature. -post portal, pre portal 2, pronountastic, oneshot-


It rained and he watched, quietly. Suspended from his management rail, he stared into the gaping, gray abyss that lay just outside the labs.

He wondered, to himself, or maybe out loud, about everything.

"What does rain feel like?" he asked nothing, like a child. He couldn't help but wonder, he got the vaguest feeling he knew, once.

But since he couldn't get off this silly rail without dying, he didn't really have a way to find out. He'd sent turrets out there, but they just stood around, or fizzled and sparked and died. It was sad, almost. They did feel pain, after all.

Little droplets clouded the shattered glass shards still stuck to the window frame. Slipping down and making tracks in the fog, which were soon repaired. Why did they do that?

Fixed in place, he continued to just watch. Watch life go one from inside the seemingly lifeless facility. His home, the home he wished only to escape.

After she'd shut down, after she'd supposedly died (though, he knew this wasn't true), everything got dark, cold, then warm, then cold again. All gradually, all repeating over and over more times than he could even remember. Things cracked and decayed around him, production went offline. All went still, all but a few lasting machines. Though it seemed more like all but him.

Sometimes, though, it rained like this. Or snowed, or hailed, or things outside miraculously caught on fire. It was quite entertaining when that happened, honestly.

But when it rained, all he could stand to do was watch. All he could stand to do was wish to feel it, to go outside, to see real life. Not the dying manufactured kind he was surrounded by.

Admittedly, he didn't think about much, didn't ponder much. It wasn't his thing. But this, this he found more thought provoking than anything, more than the meaningless tasks he had to do to keep the unchecked things checked, or keep the dusted things undusted (or something along those lines, he'd agreed to that contract an awful long time ago).

He liked to think it was his dream to escape, no matter how silly and human that sounded. It was true, to him. Though he knew it was probably, no, undoubtedly unattainable. Maybe.

But of course, he'd had ideas, plans, occurrences, et cetera. All had proven to be rather useless. Turrets were not horses, there was no android heaven, and the chances of luring a monkey into the facility were slim to none.

So he'd return, every day, to see what was going on outside the gaping hole in the wall mere feet from his management rail. Yesterday it'd rained, today it had rained, too. There seemed to be a pattern, one which he really didn't care to figure out.

Green grass and wildflowers quivered in the rain, as if cold. He couldn't tell, really. Unless with his thermometer, but he'd die if he did that, unfortunately. Dying wasn't very pleasant, he'd heard.

Anyways, did plants even shiver? He really didn't know.

Suddenly, a dark, quadrupedal figure appeared faintly through the heavy rain. It called out loudly, he watched it, listened to it. As it got closer, he recognized it as a... a cat was it? Whatever it was, it was sopping wet. Making noises that sounded more like crying than meowing.

Dark colored, with no distinguishing features, it slunk into the the gaping hole, into the facility. It stared up at him, and let out a loud yowl.

"Er... hello?" he asked, the creature replied again, with the same gusto.

"Um, sorry, I don't speak cat, or..." he briefly checked his language database, on the off chance he did speak it. "No. Nope. So, uh, shoo, or something." He motioned as best he could back out the fissure.

The animal simply hopped up onto some of the nearby rubble, like steps, up to his level. It batted at him from a distance, he backed away, rather terrified.

"Go on, get. If you stay here you'll just get killed, or skewered or – well, actually you're more likely to just get lost in here and starve than anything – but still! Scram!" he shouted at the cat, which meowed in response.

"I take it cats aren't good with reason..." he sighed. "All right, fine. Stay here, provoke the turrets, drop dead, see if I care. Just another silly creature to look after..." He angrily began back down his rail and into the facility. The cat responded to this by calling after him, then jumping down and following him from the ground.

He ignored the feline, despite it's pleas for acknowledgment. He sped up, the cat pressed on. Finally he came to the first of many gaping holes in the ground. The creature stopped at the edge as he continued out to the center.

"Ha! Can't follow me now, can you?" he called at the creature, who looked at him almost sadly. "Hey now, it's better this way. There's no food for you in here – unless you eat moss, or metals, but somehow I doubt that. Also, everything's broken and dangerous. See this bottomless pit here? It used to be a floor. Yeah, I know, dangerous huh? See, you wouldn't want to go in here so just... turn back now. Before you get lost." He got closer to the edge, and saw the cat give a quizzical look, before rearing back, and launching itself at him.

"What are you- AAAH NONONOGETOFF!" he shook as the feline attempted to clutch onto him for dear life, scratching the plating around his eye-light. Finally, the animal let go, and plummeted down into the belly of the facility, into the darkness. Letting out a final yowl as it went. He looked down in shock; one moment the wet, furry creature had been there, then poof, gone. Like everything else.

For a long time he just stared down into the abyss, computing everything. Replaying what had just happened, so he could understand what, just what had happened. Finding all of that impossibly hard.

"H-hey kitty," he finally called, "I-I'm sorry I yelled at you, just please, uh, come back up?"

His voice echoed into the blackness, soaring to the bottom before rising back to the top empty handed. It was like the world had stopped, again.

He sighed. Giving up, he began back towards his operating station on the other side of the facility.

"Better luck next time," he murmured, never thinking he'd ever have to say it again. Much less about more deaths, much less about human deaths.

He never did watch the rain again.

* * *

><p><em>an: what can i say? it was raining, and i got an idea. yes, this is mildly gay, narmy, and mistake ridden. but hey, i don't really care. it was for fun. take it with a grain of salt._


End file.
